‘Disidentification’ in Allain Rochel’s Bacchae, Tim O’Leary’s The Wrath of Aphrodite, and Aaron Mark’s Another Medea

This chapter discusses Allain Rochel’s Bacchae (2007), Tim O’Leary’s The Wrath of Aphrodite (2008), and Aaron Mark’s Another Medea (2013), based on Euripides’ Bacchae, Hippolytus, and Medea respectively. Through their use of performance strategies such as ‘camp’ (an aesthetic characterized by irony, ostentation, and exaggeration), these productions engage in queer performative counter-discourses that challenge popular stereotypes of gay men, such as the ‘fit, fashion-savvy sidekick’ and the ‘tragic’ or ‘suicidal homosexual’. In the process, they illustrate what José Esteban Muñoz has defined as ‘disidentification’ or ‘the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes subjects who fail to conform to normative culture’ (1999, 4). Thus, through reframing ancient mythological narratives, these productions serve not only to queer classical drama but also to classicize queer performance.